Motor City BroGo – 4th Gear

If I found Thursday to be filled with surprises, I was in for another big one on Friday as our plan for that day was to go to Greenfield Village (which is right next to the Henry Ford Museum).  I had read about this village Henry Ford had created in the 1930s and somehow got the impression it was like Williamsburg with period buildings all from that era.  When we got there at 9:30 in the morning and were given the map above, I could see I was quite wrong.

Waiting for the vintage steam locomotive to provide us with a circuit of the entire village, we could see by reading the names of the different buildings that they represented over 300 years of American history.  As we made our way around the track, we got a chance to see many of the buildings that we wanted to explore and see many of the period-dressed docents whom we found shared a wealth of information.  Once we made it back to where we boarded the train, we took one more tour or the city, this time a bit closer to many of the buildings—riding along the streets for our first time in a 1926 Model T.

While riding, our driver proved to be extremely knowledgeable by providing us with historical information not only about the village, but also about the Model T.

After thanking our driver, we made our way over to see our first building, the Wright Brother’s bicycle shop.

My brother had been to the Wright Brother’s bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio so we were surprised to learn that this was not a reproduction, this was the actual shop.  The Wright brothers had operated out of several different shops, in Dayton but it was this one that Ford bought in 1936, had disassembled brick by brick and board by board and shipped.  At the time of purchase, it had been functioning as a different business so, once it was reassembled in Greenfield Village, Orville, in his 60s, came to Greenfield and provided guidance on how the shop looked originally.

But what made this particular shop so historic was that here in the back…

…is where they built, in sections, their 1903 Wright Flyer, shipped them to Kitty Hawk, NC where it was assembled and on December 17, 1903, flew for the first time.

In fact, Ford not only bought the Wright shop, but he also bought and relocated the Wright home they lived in which now sits right next to the shop in Greenfield.

As we walked away in awe of what a tremendous cost and effort it took to relocate both buildings, we came across a working demonstration of the original Kitchen Sink engine.

It was fascinating to watch it sputter to life and run knowing that this is how it all began for Ford.   When we went inside a replica of the original Mack Avenue factory (the one rented), we found a milestone vehicle, the 15^th millionth Model T (a 1927 model).  In that era, this volume confirmed it was the most important motor car in the world, a distinction it still holds in the 21^st century.

Our lunch was at another relocated building, the Eagle Tavern…

…which Calvin Wood operated in the 1850s.  It was an authentic dining room where we ate, accurate down to the use of only lit candles for lighting.

It was at this point over lunch that we discussed what an enormous undertaking in effort and cost it was to completely disassemble so many buildings and relocate them here.

This was confirmed as we toured Noah Webster’s home…

…the Logan County Court House where Abraham Lincoln tried cases as a traveling lawyer…

…the Edison Menlo Park Laboratory…

…and even the original Ford home.

In all, there are 100 either relocated or newly constructed buildings in the Village and by 3:30 we had been inside about 25 of them which barely scratched the surface.  But after six hours, we had given it a yeoman’s effort and were ready for our next activity.  And as you might guess, it involved adult beverages.

One of my all-time favorite Trivial Pursuit questions was if you traveled south from Detroit, MI, which country would you first cross into.  Without the aid of a map (which would be cheating), I can recall trying to figure out if it would be Mexico or some South American country.  But interestingly, it is Canada so that was where we headed.

By the time we left Greenfield, it was rush-hour on a Friday afternoon and so it took quite a while to get through the tunnel under the Detroit River that connects downtown Detroit with Windsor, Ontario, Canada.  Obviously, most of the delay was working our way through the long car lines snaking through passport control.  On the trip I had made with my youngest son to the auto show in 2003, we had also gone into Canada where he wanted to visit Sandwich and get his picture taken next to a Sandwich Police car (we could not find one).

When asked why we were entering Canada, we said we had come over to take pictures of Detroit from the Canadian side and eat dinner (we didn’t want to say mainly to drink beer).

So, we made sure we did in fact get some pictures as well as drinking some good craft beer.

At this brewery, we found they were having their 11^th anniversary of being in business, so we got to celebrate with them.

Here, I made a huge beer error.  We often order the same flight of beers so we can each describe what aromas and tastes we detect from the ingredients before checking the brewery’s website to see how close we came to their description.  We did that here as well and if you look at the photo above, you can see that the beers are numbered 1 through 4 starting at the handle end.  But in the photo below, you can see that I picked up the wrong beer, starting at the wrong end with number 4 rather than number 1.

It wasn’t until we had polished off three beers each before we realized my blunder.  For each of the first three beers, I would say something like I smell chocolate or mango and my brother would say something completely different.  Occasionally we would say similar things, but it might just have been the power of suggestion.

Anyway, we had a good laugh at that.

After we left, we parked our car in a park along the river and walked to our next brewery.  On the way we snapped numerous photos of the Detroit skyline in case we were questioned on our way back into the US.  The group of buildings at the center of the photo is the GM world headquarters.

On our walk back to the car, we got some nice shots of the sunset before ending our night at another craft brewery where we also ate dinner.  With rush hour traffic long over, we were able to easily cross the Ambassador Bridge back into Detroit.  And just to be safe, we had our photos ready to show off to the border guard if asked what we had been doing in Canada.  He did in fact ask what we had been doing while in Canada, but he didn’t care to see the proof, so we got back safely to our hotel without any mishap.

    To be continued…